why was whitlock fired when he’s just as bad as everyone else on ESPN?

One of the things I find refreshing about Whitlock is that he admits his bias going in … in just about every article I’ve ever read of his, he makes clear the preconceptions he has — right or wrong — before he states his case.
So, to kind of “honor” him in this way, I must admit that I like Whitlock a lot, and find myself agreeing with him more often than not. He does bring the “race card” into play a lot, but it’s often in pointing out why the race card isn’t a factor in a particular story, when others try and make it so. In other words, I’ve read many articles of his in which he calls out an African-American or other minorities as often as he does white athletes. I really appreciate his fair-mindedness — it seems to me that he rarely has a political or racial agenda that he trys to push, other than the fact that politics and race relations should have little to do with sports.
I don’t think Whitlock’s always right, and I don’t always agree with everything he writes, but he’s one of the best out there, in my opinion. And his comments regarding ESPN are dead on. There’s not enough paper in the world to write all of the things wrong with ESPN and its entire operation.

is going to be hurting as more leagues launch networks. It’s hockey season so what am I doing to see hockey highlights? Yeah, watching NHL on the Fly on the NHL Network. I don’t want to deal with all the other BS that ESPN covers. If I’m going want baseball highlights at any time next year, I’m going to be watching the MLB Channel.

I know my brother is a HUGE NFL fan and he basically watches the NFL Network and lives on blogs now. If ESPN hadn’t ponied up for all the telecast rights for the leagues, I believe they’d be in even worse trouble. So it makes sense why they dropped a half a billion on the BCS telecast rights.

I agree that the pumping up of the Big 12 has been tiresome. It probably is the best conference this season, but only by virtue of the fact that the Big East and the ACC suck as usual, a bunch of highly-touted teams in the SEC shit the bed, and the Pac-10 is pretty green at important positions like QB. And a Michigan-less Big 10 has essentially declawed the entire conference in the media’s eyes. Even with all that, the margin between the best and worst conferences isn’t quite so big as ESPN would have you believe.

In general, there has been a helluva lot more parity in college football over the past 2 years. That said, nice little seasons by Ball State and Tulsa don’t impress me, much as Rutgers and Louisville making their adorable runs at the Top 10 a couple of years ago didn’t impress me. They play against inferior talent within their own division, and on top of it, they play East Akron Tech or Central Chattanooga for their out-of-conference games. Meanwhile, the Pac-10 has the most ambitious out-of-conference schedules in the nation, living and dying with every game against Ohio State (USC) or Penn State (Oregon State). Unfortunately, this season they’ve died more often than not.